The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Pat’s place
Present: Euhan, Brad, Nick, Lindsay, Alex, Jeff, Rick D., Brian, Pat, Paul.
Played: Mr. Jack, Stone Age, Agricola, Oregon, Amun Re, SushiZock im Gockelwok, RoboRally, Galaxy Trucker, Nexus Ops, Puerto Rico, Bluff, Tichu.

It seems to have been a long time between tokens for Euhan, Nick and even Neil M. - good to see them all back and into it.
And the Xmas season begins to emerge. You really know it’s nearly Xmas when… you arrive at Pat’s house and his neighbour’s house looks a little like this. Sorry for the blurriness here; I didn’t exactly come prepared with tripod.
Actually, apart from this one, the rather blurry Nexus Ops pic, and the washed-out Galaxy Trucker one, I’m quite happy with the way many of tonight’s shots turned out. The best ones are probably the Stone Age and the RoboRally close-ups…

Mr. Jack: Character movements and deduction to identify and capture Jack the Ripper, with Euhan and Neil M.
Neil captured Euhan’s Mr Jack on turn 7.

Stone Age: In progress when I turned up. Apart from the brief moment to take a snap, I didn’t see any of this game. But a glance at the scores implies a customary overwhelming performance by Lindsay.
Results: Lindsay (green): 214. Nick (red): 154. Rick D. (yellow): 139. Brad (blue): 97.

Agricola: Also in progress when I arrived, and apparently over in rapid time too.
Results: Jeff (green), Pat (blue): 31. Brian (red): 29. Alex (purple): “not recorded but less than 29″. I was to learn later than Alex’s score was even embarrassingly lower than 29. But let’s not dwell on that…

Oregon: Was played. Extensive game data follows.
Results: Lindsay: 66. Rick, Brad: 60. Nick: 57.

Amun Re: Quite a long game for just three players I think. Interestingly, in the first two rounds of the second era, all provinces drawn were ones that were not inhabited in the first era. And yes, the province cards were (apparently) shuffled between eras.
I couldn’t pick who was the likely winner throughout this game. But an interesting crunch came for Neil on the very last turn, in which he bid a whopping 24 gold for the sacrifice. This was important for him to nudge the production marker as high as possible. He could have bid significantly lower, still won the three-items contest, and also secured the most cash for a relative 6 point difference on me at the end, and perhaps the game win. But then again I don’t recall the farmer difference between us – I think I definitely had more. So who knows – maybe Neil would have won if he’d just bid a more modest $10 (or thereabouts) on that last sacrifice.
17 mins rules and setup; 78 mins game time.
Results: Paul (green): 43. Euhan (white): 42. Neil M (blue): 40.

SushiZock im Gockelwok: I thought this might have been a little trick that someone was playing on me. See, I had written “Cheeky Monkey” in my notes, because this was the title that had seen being opened and looked at on that table. Much later I checked my notes again and saw the following time and scores information written underneath, with Cheeky Monkey crossed out and this bizarre name written in its place. But, a click on the BGG link (the game title here) will take you there – it is indeed a real game (simply “Sushi Bar” in English).
17 mins.
Rick: 8. Lindsay: 6. Brad: 3. Nick: -1.

RoboRally: The Agricolans then leapt over several centuries, including the 21st, to program homicidal robots.
Results: Jeff: Declared the winner with 3 flags (or as good as). Pat and Alex on 2 each (although one or both of them dead). Brian on 1.

Galaxy Trucker: In the absence of any good economic development game being proffered at this time, I agreed to join Brad and Alex in the ship buildin’ and truckin’ experience.
In the first of 3 rounds I did ok compared to the others, but finished last in building my ship, therefore trailed in the race and the choice of goods from planetary visits. The same thing happened in the second round, although Alex made a tiny mistake in his setup that saw him lose about 40% of his ship before we’d even started.
Again in the 3rd round I was the last to finish shipbuilding, but was feeling quite good about it. But on the journey it did take some hits and I seemed to be losing pieces of my ship faster than the other guys. However, at the end I was surprised to see my ship in front on the race track, so the bonus and remaining pieces of cargo were enough to edge me ahead of the others. If only Alex’s engineers had checked their work ahead of that second run…!
13 mins setup and rules explan; 83 mins game time.
Results: Paul (green): 59. Alex (yellow): 51. Brad (pink): 50.

Nexus Ops: Translucent critters do battle.
Neil M: 11. Pat: 6. Jeff: 3.

Puerto Rico: The old favourite makes an appearance - maybe the second one for the year.
Results: Euhan, Lindsay: both 60, but Euhan nudges ahead 3-2 on the tie-break. Brian: 48. Rick D: 39.

Bluff: Pat fell off his chair (when he was knocked out the game first). Lindsay won with one die left. Then Euhan, then Jeff, then Rick.

Tichu: The last game of the evening for the remaining die-hards.
Pat and Paul defeated Jeff and Alex, 495 to 5, in about 4 hands and 28 mins.

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Brad, Pat, Lindsay, Alex, Jeff, Richard, Brian, Paula, Paul.
Played: Oregon, Imperial, Agricola, Kuhhandel, Ra, Galloping Pigs.

It seems like ages since I’ve been in a regular games session, even though I and others got in a few games last week at Tommy’s (Citadels, Wits and Wagers), and a few 2p games have hit the table with the missus recently (Agricola, Java). But it was good having the crowd back here again for a combination of new and old games.

Oregon: This one is still kind-of new (< 2years!), and sticks in my mind because I won my first play of this at ConTrail this year. Still fun, but following my result in May, Richard demonstrates that this is obviously a game for newbies. Although Brad maybe blows that theory - this was his first game too...
15 mins rules and setup; 31 mins game time.
Results: Richard (yellow): 73. Pat (blue): 66. Paul (green) & Brad (red): 57 (tie-break in Paul's favour).

Imperial: This was the biggie for the evening - a new one brought along by Lindsay, although I understand it might be a re-print of an older game? Or am I misunderstanding the the discussion around this…?
It looks like it might be my kind of thing, so I look forward to having a go at this some time soon…
Sorry about the blurriness in the close-up pic. Bummer.
36 mins rules and setup; 115 mins game time.
Results: Alex: 143. Jeff: 140. Lindsay: 126. Brian: 112.

Agricola: “Five-player Agricola? Are you serious? The down-time will be a killer..!”
There being no other objections we rail-roaded over this one and got stuck in anyway. And as it turned out, the down-time, if any, was barely significant. There is so much information to absorb and process on the table and in your hand of cards that brief deliberations by opponents are generally tolerable.
In this game Richard seemed to grow his population and fill his farmland slightly faster than everyone else, hence I thought he was a likely winner. Maybe he would have got there if he didn’t have cook two cattle on his second or fourth-last turn…
On the other hand, Pat delayed his family growth until quite late in the game. However, he eventually made up for lost time by popping out babies all over the place and securing a full 15 points in family members with his last action. At least twice Pat beat me to the family-member-without-a-room action, so I stayed on three family members and used my last action, in combination with my Clay Seller occupation, to pick up a wad of clay and trade it in for sheep and pigs, and finish in the respectable placings.
After playing a few games now with my standard set, it was nice to play with Pat’s animeeples. Maybe I should look into getting these for my set some time…
30 mins rules and setup; 86 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 35. Paul (white): 32. Richard (purple): 30. Paula (green): 27. Brad (red): 26 (or was it 17?).

KuhHandel: Bluffing, trading and set collecting (I believe).
5 mins rules and setup; 48 mins game time.
Results: Richard 1st, then Jeff, then Brian then Lindsay.

Ra: Four of us played this oldie-but-goodie while the others played Kuhhandel.
I’ve never felt particularly good at Ra. The other players always seem to time their run and their best bids far better than me, and throughout this game felt no different. Both Pat and Alex drew attention to the fact that after the first round I was out in front, But with Pat accumulating a vast collection of monuments I thought he would comfortably storm home. The turning point was almost certainly that one auction that featured a certain monument that would have given Pat his 4th in a set and therefore 15 points, but Alex gallantly threw himself in and bid 10 to deny him the prize (and, ultimately, let me win). Thanks Alex!
5 mins rules and setup; 34 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 31. Paula: 29. Alex: 28. Pat: 20.

Galloping Pigs: While the continued swinging the Kuh by the handle, we ended our evening riding pigs to victory. Rewarding stuff.
11 mins. Paul and Paula: 10 each; Alex: 4. Pat: 0.